upgrade to High Sierra or not

New iMac has been brought by Santa...27" ssd 24ram.

 

I use LR6.13 a lot...PS6 not so much, but I am reading that High Sierra and Adobe do not get along well, in some instances.

New Machine arrived and has Sierra, ie not High Sierra. This would be the time to upgrade the OS, new virgin machine.

 

My inclination is to not upgrade to HS at this time, but seek the wisdom of the group. Apple chat advised holding off, but really had nothing specific to mention.

 

TIA

If you use any 32-bit legacy apps, you may have problems. Nik is an example but there are others.

The current OS (and I just upgraded to 10.13.2) runs 32 bit applications just fine. Running quite a few on a regular basis. But that will go way in the foreseeable future and Apple has stated this clearly.

I think for now, it isn't broken...etc; Will the advantages (?) of high sierra outweigh possible risks? Right now, I am satisfied with current OSX, high sierra seems like am incremental upgrade, not a watershed moment.. Thanks for the input, but I think I will wait a bit. I am coming from Mavericks, so Sierra will be a leap, I suppose.

If you have Sierra and it works, High Sierra should run fine. I have the impression that it may be a little faster than Sierra, but it is so subjective...

When Apple does the next one, however, as already said, it will break all the old stuff.

 

I'm running a lot of old stuff and I did have to go back to some "legacy" versions of some the "usual suspect" auxiliary applets, etc. Nik works flawlessly in my case.

Edited December 7, 2017 by JDMvW

Given the way they're rushing out security patches without adequate testing (the root login bypass patch broke connecting to network shares unless you drop to a terminal and run a command to reconfigure the local KDC, the subsequent High Sierra update rolling the security fix back and the fix doesn't reapply without prompting for a required reboot - which a lot of Mac users rarely do, etc, I'd wait for the next cumulative upgrade to be released before moving to High Sierra.

 

I'm opting to not upgrade the Art Department's digital lab / classroom between the fall and spring semesters for that reason - it's working well, and I'm not confident that H.S. isn't going to bite us. Seems to be a rockier upgrade than ElC to Sierra, from folks I know who upgraded early. Admittedly, worrying about a lab in use day-to-day for classes is different than a single computer, but I'm not in a huge hurry.

And yet, virtually all the advice I’ve heard from security experts: update the OS/security patches as often as released. Hopefully Apple and others will fully support older OS’s.

The current OS (and I just upgraded to 10.13.2) runs 32 bit applications just fine. Running quite a few on a regular basis. But that will go way in the foreseeable future and Apple has stated this clearly.

 

Right, my mistake. I saw the 32-bit announcement for the next release and that Nik wasn't working and misconstrued.

ok, now I am thinking twice because of the above...I did the migration from my old Mavericks machine, and so far, with a couple of tweaks to a couple of third party non image programs, things seem to be running smoothly though I am still fine tuning. Need to run a batch of photos through LR, connect external drives, connect time machine and run carbon copy cloner backups. If and when all that plays well, I will revisit the upgrade issue.

 

I use the video player Movist, latest version, and there is some chatter that it has some issues with HS, so that is being evaled also.

 

Thanks to all for the advice.

According to the latest information from Adobe (Known issues - Running Photoshop CC on macOS 10.13 High Sierra), the latest CC products are compatible with High Sierra 13.1.2. However another product I use heavily, Steinberg Nuendo 8, has not been completely tested. If you have older Adobe products, you may be in for a rough time if you upgrade.

 

You must check with the manufacturer of software on which you rely before upgrading. If you choose to be a lab rat, let us know how it works out.

Last night I downloaded High Sierra for my iMac. It was tedious, but I got it done!

 

I started the download, and after about 20 minutes, I got the installer window. When I clicked on it, it asked my for my Apple Administrator password - WTH! I had no Idea what it was... I tried my two most common passwords that I use, and neither one worked. I did a search online for changing the Administrator password, but the instructions led to a dead end. AHHHHHHHH.

 

Out of desperation, I checked a couple of old papers with my seldom used passwords, and Hallelulah, I found it.

 

Once I entered it and the install started, it took about 45 minutes to complete. Whew!

 

So far, I don't see any problems, and several problems I was having with Safari and Firefox have so far not resurfaced.

I've upgraded a few secondary computers to High Sierra, but I'm holding off for now on my main MBP. One of the drives in my Mac Pro 5,1 has it installed, but I actually mostly run that computer on Snow Leopard for legacy reasons(Nikon Scan). Jumping between the two is a bit of a pain since the High Sierra drive is AFPS and Snow Leopard doesn't even have the ability to read it(not that it makes a difference since I don't think that Snow Leopard can bless a disk running El Capitan or newer).

 

BTW, those of us with the last generation "cheese graters" did get a bit of a treat with High Sierra in that we got an EFI/Boot ROM update. I think the previous version dated to 2010. The only thing the update added was support for AFPS, but none the less it was nice that Apple let us survive one more round.

 

I should add that LR6 is my big concern, and it's the reason why I have held off upgrading my MBP. I need to figure out where my second license is and pull it so that I can try on one of my computers running High Sierra.

...since the High Sierra drive is AFPS and Snow Leopard doesn't even have the ability to read it(not that it makes a difference since I don't think that Snow Leopard can bless a disk running El Capitan or newer).

 

Wonder if a High Sierra drive on a current and/or future system will read HFS+ Journaled HD from legacy OS's. I've formatted all my drives and backup drives off my 2010 MacMini/OS 10.6.8 to this format including a 256GB Sandisk Cruzer Glide USB drive. If I didn't reformat the jump drive and left it at default format it takes forever to copy all my content files.

 

I guess it's true we really don't have photos, video & audio unless we have a computer to show us. Photography doesn't exist without a computer. And we don't have any say when the content is unreadable because we didn't keep up with technology...as in keep paying the piper.

 

I still haven't gotten around to converting all my xmp Raws and JPEGs to full rez 16bit TIFF's. There are thousands of images and it's too expensive to print them all.

I format most of my external drives in NTFS, for easy compatibility with Windows systems. It's a better file system than HfS, except for certain maintenance utilities that run in OS. Performance under "Paragon NTFS" is very good.

 

A password manager, like Datavault, is worth its weight in gold. Datavault updates automatically via iCloud, so all of your OS, iOS and Window devices are kept synchronized. It also generates strong passwords that are almost impossible to remember, but very secure.

Wonder if a High Sierra drive on a current and/or future system will read HFS+ Journaled HD from legacy OS's. I've formatted all my drives and backup drives off my 2010 MacMini/OS 10.6.8 to this format including a 256GB Sandisk Cruzer Glide USB drive. If I didn't reformat the jump drive and left it at default format it takes forever to copy all my content files.

 

Sierra(and I think High Sierra, although I haven't confirmed this) will READ HFS standard just fine, although it can't write. Write support for HFS went away with PPC Macs(a PPC running 10.5.8 can write them just fine, but an Intel Mac on 10.4.11 can not). Still, though, I can pop an HFS and I think even MFS 1.44mb floppy in a USB floppy drive connected to my modern Mac and still read it fine. It seems like there might even be a way to enable HFS write on 10.6.8, although I don't recall for sure what the procedure(if any) is.

 

It will be interesting to see how Apple handles HFS+ going forward. It was introduced with OS 8.1 in 1998, and is actually supported on all three CPU architectures Apple has used(68K, PPC, Intel). We got roughly 8 years from the time HFS+ was introduced to the time Apple started curtailing HFS functionality and even then it could be argued that it didn't officially "go away" until sometime in 2010 or 2011 when the last PPC Macs would have rolled off Applecare and Leopard stopped being updated.

 

I suspect that we'll continue to see full HFS+ support for at least the next 3 or 4 OS releases, but then I don't have a crystal ball and I ESPECIALLY don't have one that sees inside Cupertino. There again, if HFS is any guide, HFS+ volumes will continue to be readable for a LONG time.

 

BTW, when you upgrade a computer to OS 8.1 from an earlier OS, the installer is pretty transparent about giving you the option to format-in-place as HFS+(I don't think it was required until 8.5). It's been a little while since I've installed 8.1 over an earlier OS(although admittedly a little while means a year or so in my case) but I remember it explaining in some detail. By contrast, unless you're somewhat "plugged in" to what's going on, chances are you have no idea that High Sierra reformats as APFS during the install. The first couple of rounds of betas gave you the option, but now it's either buried in the fine print or not there at all.

I have been using the upgrade now for over a month and have not had any issues.

GR

I format most of my external drives in NTFS, for easy compatibility with Windows systems. It's a better file system than HfS, except for certain maintenance utilities that run in OS.

On my Mac in OS 10.6.8 Disk Utility only provides MS-DOS (FAT) and ExFAT as the only non-Apple/HFS reformating. No NTFS.

 

Researching ExFAT indicates that is the format I should choose for the 256GB thumb drive but it's slow to copy. My external HD's I use as both backup and CCcloner startup has to remain HFS+ because ExFAT doesn't support journaling according to this article on all available formats for Windows/Mac sharing... Why your USB drive's file format matters: FAT32 vs. exFAT vs. NTFS

There are tools to read NTSF volumes in OS X, but they are all paid programs and I've never seen one that didn't have at least some drawbacks.

 

Since probably 90% or better of my physical computer interactions are with Macs, I keep most of my flash drives and other externals formatted as HFS+(I even have one or two HFS drives kicking around). It makes my life a lot easier.

 

When I do need to go cross platform, I use FAT32.

I use ExFAT format only for thumb drives I use for transmittals. That way it doesn't matter if the customer uses Windows or OS. True, Paragon NTFS is not free, but $20 for a utility I use daily is worth the cost. Paragon has the funds to update and upgrade the product from time to time, rather than relying on volunteers who work without critical oversight. They have also responded to various issues, which I was able to document thoroughly by following their instructions.

 

I use ExFAT for file transfer. None of my devices which use CF or SD cards are compatible with ExFAT , HPS, or NTFS.

My Photoshop CS5 always does this with High Sierra but Pixelmator does not. Perhaps repairing your disk with Disk Utility will fix Pixelmator?

I still have not upgraded to HS, but I did run into a glitch in LR6.14 after seemingly migrating fine to the new machine. It refused to find my catalogs in their usual location---that being on an external drive where I keep all image files. They, images and catalogs, were there and no matter what tricks I used to point LR in the proper direction, it still balked. Did the permissions thing, other stuff...no joy.

I found a suggestion online to move/copy the catalog file folder to the local hard drive and that worked. No one really had an explanation for why, but reported they did that and all was rosy.

 

After that episode and a subsequent crash that required re-installing the OS (which went fine and lost no data or settings), I felt my pioneering urge to migrate up to HS slip away a bit, for the time being.

Upgraded 2 Macbook Airs with High Sierra, and the Epson wireless printing functionality broke. Needed to reinstall the printer with a dedicated IP address. Lost wireless scanning recognition with Epson Scan, haven't found a solution to that problem. Both of these problems are reported by other users. Epson seems to not have released a full suite of drivers compatible with HS for all products.

Steinberg Nuendo (sound editing) is not yet fully compatible. Any program on which you rely must be fully compliant before making the jump. It was months before Adobe Premiere Pro worked with Sierra, but I blindly upgraded a new iMac, and there is no going back once that is done. This time around, Adobe seems to be safe. The short update cycle of subscription products (and consistent cash flow) is probably a major factor.

 

I suspect that changing the disk file system will have issues that will take a long time to shake out. The most serious issues raised in this thread seem to confirm that opinion. For a variety of reasons, most of my external drives are formatted in NTFS, and only drives like Time Machine are HFS+. That may change as I rely more on OS X, bur for now my backup is an aging HP Xeon work station. I get data transfer rates of 300-500 MB/s, so speed and compatibility with NTFS is not a problem.

 

Don't assume, verify!

Nik works flawlessly in my case.

 

Actually, a couple of minor NIK features don't work, but most do. I have older machines still at earlier OSs in case I really need them...

I put High Sierra on my parent's 2009 iMacs and the older version of Office they were using made the iMacs go "tilt." Not compatible.